Benefits of women's education within marriage: evidence from South Africa

Haochi Zheng, University of Minnesota

This paper examines returns to wife's schooling in husband's earnings using panel data from a province in South Africa. Although it has been recognized in previous studies that woman's human capital has significant influence on children being as a mother, the effect of woman's education on husband's earnings has not been properly identified. In particular, the roles of women's human capital in the household and labor market are interesting in the post-apartheid South Africa where institutional constraints in apartheid labor markets are abolished. Empirical results in fixed-effect and difference-in-difference estimation show that i) wife's education also contributes to the husband's wage growth, ii) the number of years in marriage augments the wife's education effect on the husband's wage growth, and iii) marriage premium do not exist in this study. The results have implications on marriage market and income distribution.